


I am an Island

by orphan_account



Category: Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-06
Updated: 2010-05-06
Packaged: 2017-10-12 02:57:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/120013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frodo reflects on the anniversary of his parents' death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I am an Island

**Author's Note:**

> Written ~2003 or 2004, edited 2010 for my dignity.
> 
> wow this shit's old.

  
Frodo gazed out the window. It was snowing. It was picturesque, the way the snowflakes drifted down, slowly, almost lazily. But he wasn't looking at the snowflakes. They were merely there, passing by the window. Frodo's eyes were unfocused and his expression was glazed. He didn't feel well, his head hurt, and he was sad. He didn't remember why.

He expected to hear Sam come up the corridor to check up on him, but Sam had taken Rose out that night. They were going to go to dinner and dancing at the Green Dragon. Bag-End was almost silent, and the world outside was muffled by the snow. The only noise was a faint crackling from the fire that had been built in the study.

Frodo would have been at his desk, working on his writing, but he hadn't felt well, so he'd gone and sat at the window, watching the snow fall. He tried to think what the date was. It was December, so it wasn't any illness that was connected to the Ring, but he still felt like there was something tied in with this all.

He spent some time debating silently the merits of moving, and finally released his hold on his knees and turned to look at the calendar. It was the 14th. The date of his parent's death.

Frodo sighed unhappily. It really wasn't his day. That morning he'd woken up to find that his blankets had slid off the bed and the fire out, and he figured out why his toes seemed frozen: they nearly were. He'd burned his toast at breakfast, and burned _himself_ on the teakettle at tea time. He'd then been startled by something that afternoon, resulting in a floor strewn with carefully organized papers that he'd worked on all morning.

He stared out the window again, thinking about his parents. He'd been young when they died, twelve years old. He remembered his mother's warm smile, and how she always smelled of strawberries. His chest felt tight, like a vice was clamping down, making it difficult to breathe. He tried thinking of something else, something not as painful. He looked about the room, trying to take his mind off his mother. His gaze fell upon a picture on the wall.

It had been his mother's favourite. His father had given it to her on their anniversary. Frodo shook his head, trying again. He next looked at his desk. Bilbo had gotten this desk; it didn't connect with his mother. There was his quill sticking out of the ink well.

His mother had owned a hat with a feather on it. This wasn't working. Somehow, everything in the room reminded him of one of his parents, or both of them.

He looked out the window again, giving in to the memories of his parents. He thought about Drogo's hearty laugh, the way his mother smiled at him when he came home, the way his father would pick him up in a hug, and how he always smelled like wood smoke. The fire popped and the faint scent of wood smoke wafted past Frodo.

His chest hurt, his eyes hurt, his head hurt. But he was 51, he wasn't going to _cry_. All that way through Mordor, and he hadn't cried. He wasn't going to start now.

Frodo's eyes glazed over, as he looked out into the fresh snow, the twilight throwing the hillside into strange, white relief. He thought about romping through the snow with his dad, building snowhobbits, sledding down the hill at Brandy Hall and racing back up the slope, to fall panting in the snow, laughing. When it got too cold, he and Drogo would dash inside and shut the door quickly, not letting any of the cold air in; Drogo giving Premula a cold kiss on the cheek; the warm cocoa she'd set in front of Frodo as he hopped into his seat at the table. She'd sit down with them, the three of them in their warm kitchen, and Frodo would tell her about all the things they did in the snow.

He couldn't do that anymore. He couldn't tell his mum about the snow.

His eyes stung. Too many memories raced through his mind, chasing one another. He thought back to when he was about eight years old. One of his cousins, he didn't remember which one, had taken a toy of his. He'd gone crying to his dad, who had told him to let the cousin play with it. Frodo went and sulked for a while, until his mum had found him under a table and told him the cousin had gone home. And taken the toy with him. Frodo had burst into angry tears, but his father had gone out after the cousin's family and relieved the small child of Frodo's dog on wheels.

Anguish crashed through Frodo's body.

Wheels: that reminded him of a time when he and dad had been riding in a cart, singing silly songs. Songs: a memory came of a night by the fire, when his father had pulled out a fiddle and the family spent the evening singing folk songs until Frodo fell asleep in his mum's arms. Then, every night he'd woken up after a nightmare, and his mum had come and sit with him in his room for an hour until he'd fallen asleep again.

Then that night, that night they said they'd go out for dinner and boating, and that they'd be back in the morning. That night when Frodo went to sleep knowing his parents would wake him up in the morning. Going to sleep assured, knowing. Waking up that morning late, the sun shining bright in his window, Bilbo standing over him, trying to wake him up. He remembered he'd been confused, why was Bilbo there? Where were mum and dad? Why hadn't they woken him up?

Then Bilbo taking him on his lap, and telling him what happened, that they'd found his parents quite a ways down stream from where they started. The boat was broken on the rocks, both his parents drowned. Bilbo told him the whole truth, he didn't believe in talking down to children.

"They're gone, my boy," he'd said, "I'm sorry."

Frodo remembered not being able to cry. It hadn't made sense. They'd told him they'd be back in the morning. They'd be back! Finally, almost two days later he'd cried. The tears streaming down his face, thinking of his parents, how'd they'd gone and left him. He was angry at first, not sure how to deal with this. He couldn't run to his mum and hug her and cry into her shoulder, he couldn't tell his dad how he felt. He couldn't do anything, they weren't there.

He wasn't going to cry, damn it all. He wasn't. Not for a second.

He curled up on the window seat, hugged his knees to his chest, silent tears streaming down his face. There was a picture of his mum and dad on the bookshelf near the desk. He took it up gently, and hugged it to his body, hiccoughing.

Vision blurring, Frodo looked out the window again, in the direction of the Hobbiton graveyard. His parents had been buried at Brandy Hall, but a monument had been erected in their honor. The show continued to fall. Try as he might, he couldn't control his grief, so he gave up trying, and let it crash over him like ocean waves. Finally he cried himself to sleep, curled up against the window, clutching the picture.

And so he was found around two o' clock in the morning by Sam who'd come home, and found Frodo's bed empty. Sam decided to let him be, and before softly leaving the room, he built up the fire again, and then closed the door quietly behind him.


End file.
